Ill 
BIG GAME SHOOTING , 1887 
51 
camelman in the Nile expedition for the relief of Gordon, and 
had become a very fair shot. 
By the light of a full moon we started across the Berbera 
Maritime Plain, going south-west ; and at 1 a.m. reached a 
small tree called “Nasfya” (the resting-place), sixteen miles 
from the coast. Early in the night we passed several karias of 
trading caravans halted round Berbera for the trading season, 
each circle of mat huts pouring out a crowd of Midgan dogs to 
give us a surly salute. At the last karia I fired at and missed 
a spotted hysena. At Nasiya we threw ourselves down on the 
sand, and unloading the camels took a short sleep to refresh 
ourselves for the work yet before us, and at 4 a.m. pushed on 
again towards the first water, Deregodleh, twenty-two miles 
from Berbera. As we advanced the bare-looking Maritime 
Plain began to break up into stony watercourses and thorny 
bush. We passed, to our right, a detached flat-topped hill of 
trap formation called Syene, part of the first low Maritime 
Range. 
Near Syene I saw two buck Soemmerring’s gazelles, looking 
large and white by the light of the rising sun at my back. The 
wind was blowing from the front, and I made a careful stalk, 
but on raising my head from the last watercourse the aoul had 
removed three hundred yards distant, and were stopping to 
gaze. They had seen my camels coming along. Then with 
whisking tails they trotted away, and I never saw them again. 
Soemmerring’s gazelle carries a pair of graceful lyre -shaped 
black horns, about fourteen inches in length and well ringed. 
When still scarcely clear of Syene, catching a glimpse of dark 
red in a watercourse two hundred yards to my left, I walked 
towards it, put up a Waller’s gazelle, and bagged him with my 
Martini-Henry rifle. 
At 10 a.m. we reached Deregodleh, a watercourse which has 
cut deep into the limestone rock of the interior plain and hollowed 
it out into caves, in which sheep, when waiting at the wells, take 
shelter from the sun. There is some very low cover on each 
bank, in which hares and the little SaJcdro antelopes are to be 
found. 
We left Deregddleh and marched to Mandeira, a delightful 
headquarters. It is a valley about three miles wide, under G4n 
Libah mountain, a bluff of the great Gdlis Range. The mount- 
ains overlooking this valley rise to about six thousand feet 
above sea-level. The high country beyond them is called Ogo, 
